[kirjtc2]

Where have you gone, Frank McKenna?

Bathurst call centre closing
Published Saturday April 4th, 2009
Service Sitel closing its northern facility, putting 275 people out of work as of May 1


C1
Dave MacLean
Telegraph-Journal

Northern New Brunswick has once again been rocked by the loss of a major employer as Sitel announced Friday it is closing its Bathurst call centre, putting 275 people out of work.

"We have been an active part of the Bathurst business community for a number of years so the decision to close our site here does not come easy," Robert Morley, site director of the Bathurst facility, said in a press release issued late Friday. "This closure is due to the changing business needs of our client and is in no way reflective of the quality of customer care provided by our Bathurst associates."

The company said it is working with government agencies and other businesses in the region to assist those affected in finding new employment. Sitel also said in the press release that it is encouraging employees to apply for open positions at the company's other "nearby" facilities in Moncton and Saint John.

Donald Hammond, executive director of Entreprise Chaleur, said his organization would have to evaluate the value of call centres in the northern city and then determine whether to pursue other companies in the industry.

"I don't have much detail yet and I'm not in any position to comment on the numbers," Hammond said before the company confirmed the closure. "But it appears they'll be laying off some people as of May 1.

"The word is that the employees were told yesterday what to expect. It sounds like they'll be downsizing at the end of this month. When there are job losses like this, our first priority is the employees."

Hammond said he hopes to meet with company officials to get a better understanding of the decision.

"One of the things we want to do very soon is sit down with the site manager of Sitel here and look at all the issues to see if there's any way we can help," he said. "We have to eventually determine what Sitel's long-term commitment to the region is going to be. Are these layoffs permanent? Are they temporary? If the intention is that they are to be permanent, then our job is to determine whether we want to contact other call centres.

"There are others looking for a location. At one point, we gave up pursuing other call centres because we felt we had reached our saturation point. What we have to look at now is to determine the impact of this decision and then is there a case to be made for us to pursue other call centres."

Hammond said the layoffs might also act as a catalyst to get some people thinking about retraining opportunities.

"This could be the right time for some of those who are going to be affected to consider going into a retraining program, to maybe consider another career. And with the summer coming up, I presume that there will be additional needs from local employers looking for people with similar skill sets. That could mean an opportunity for employers to hire some of these people."

Hammond said the region has been making efforts to diversify its economy in the past decade and those efforts are helping lessen the impact of closures like the one at Sitel.

"I think we'll be less impacted because of the work we've been doing in diversifying our economy," he said. "We saw that with the closures of Smurfit-Stone and more recently with Blue Note Caribou Mines, the impact wasn't as severe as some had expected because our economy is more diverse.

"There's been an impact, but it could have been a lot worse and to me that's an indication that some of the things that we've been doing are right on track and we have to keep building on it."